The proportion saying it is very difficult to move from one class to another has increased from 17% in 2005 to 32% in 2022.

natcen.ac.uk/news/40-year...

That introduces the question of education as an opportunity to move from working class expectation to middle class experience, probably much reduced and higher risk due to costs, and a general sense of fairness and opportunity in society whatever ones job is.

It does not invalidate the role of inherited wealth just suggests those people are not part of a middle-class discussion, which strikes me as a bigger issue, the huge pay differential and that society needs workers who do jobs classed as menial.

I suppose we need to look at the commercialisation of higher education, it is now costly, the customer pays so surely they get the qualification, in a society which has shifted values this may be a major attitude change.

I don't doubt that economic opportunities for young people are challenging, and that family wealth matters, what I fear is people forget how many never had the better life some had, low wages, redundancies, old age after a life of minimal income.

The stock phrase when I was growing up was "what matters is who you know, not what you know." I doubt that was always correct, I suspect it is more often now.

Amazing how life experience differs depending on access to resources, plenty of ways workers are got rid of despite what we hope are protections.

had a better life than their parents (at least economically) that is changing for the worse, I saw a post about heavy item delivery by a firm that cut costs by not having a tailgate lift on a lorry, injured workers will be sacked, return back to unsafe working conditions.

long time to show how many educated and capable people do not survive lacking access to capital and social capital of contacts and knowing how things work. I grew up in an environment in which most children had few expectations, but due to economic growth and legislation they probably generally

example, we can miss how many people had the right resources and connections, an inter-generational middle class recruitment opportunity partly because of a few who made the leap from working class parents experience to their achievements due to education and the reality that survivorship takes a

Undoubtably an element, I find the avoidance of class in these discussions fascinating, much of the sense that parents had it better must come from those people who had parents who had educational opportunities, which always had an element of capital and social capital. Conservation is a good

My wife makes the point that maybe endless digital engagement, which can extend into the night instead of sleep may have altered concentration, I think this is plausible.

Surely social media has massively enhanced such peoples influence, why do the hard life changing work when with the right style you can fake it and gain more (so it might seem) than actually doing the work.

Posers always existed, people who quoted the right books, knew from reviews the right things to say, which changed with current mores, they could be polished but you sussed them out, nothing meant anything to them other than the external impression on others.

I recollect reading authors who had been considered to be 'greats' not for study, not to pass exams, for no other reason than I suppose a cultural concept that exposure to such work would alter your own insight and thought, it was hard work but seemed meaningful.

If this is so we have a much bigger problem, I suspect we do.

increasingly meaningless. Great reputation, wealth, influence, power based on nothing.

marketing and celebrity buzz has more relevance than substance, a process which has permeated so much of society beyond business and politics where it first dominated perhaps the young know it is all bullshit. They just want the grade and the job title in an unfair world where merit is becoming

Yet it strikes me that young people are smart, they often see society for what it is, often brutally so, many see their parents, teachers and figures in society more clearly than we allow ourselves to see ourselves. In a world of 'Emperors new clothes' in which hype, spin, surface appearance of